Parsley's name means rock celery, and the root goes back to Linear B
Behind the word parsley sits the Greek petroselinon, rock celery. The celery half, selinon, is ancient enough to appear in Mycenaean Greek as se-ri-no, written in the Linear B script. From Greek it passed into Latin, then into Old English and Old French, whose two versions merged into the word we use.
Garden parsley, Petroselinum crispum, belongs to the carrot family and grows natively in Greece, the Balkans, Algeria and Morocco. It has since naturalised widely wherever the climate suits it. It may first have been grown in Sardinia, which Linnaeus named as its wild home, and cultivation dates to around the 3rd century BC. Britain supposedly first grew it in 1548, though written sources suggest the English were already using it back in Anglo-Saxon times. Modern German still calls it Petersilie, almost unchanged from the Old English.
In temperate regions it lives for two years. The first season produces a rosette of finely divided leaves and a taproot that stores food through winter. The second brings a flowering stem up to 75 centimetres high, topped with flat clusters of tiny yellowish flowers, after which the plant sets seed and normally dies. In the tropics and subtropics it behaves as an annual.
Cooks recognise three main forms. Curly parsley is the classic garnish. Flat-leaf parsley has a stronger taste, which is why many chefs prefer it. Root parsley, grown for its taproot, is eaten across central, eastern and southern Europe as a snack or cooked into soups, stews and broths.
Few herbs are so woven into so many cuisines. The French pound it with garlic into persillade, and the British make a creamy parsley sauce whose variant, liquor, accompanies pie and mash. Italians build salsa verde on it, with capers, anchovies and garlic, and mix it with lemon zest and garlic into gremolata for ossobuco. In Brazil, chopped parsley and scallion together form cheiro-verde, green aroma, a seasoning sold in market bundles and used in everything from beans to stocks. Parsley is also credited with neutralising garlic smells in cooking.
Source: Parsley
